Everything, Everything Review

If I'm being perfectly honest, I have no idea why I decided to see this movie. But I did. And driving to the theater, I came up with so many different excuses as to why I was seeing this movie. And, well, as Selena Gomez says in her new song, I felt like a pretty bad liar as each new excuse came to my brain. Thus the real reason is because this first month of the summer season has only brought us one major movie a week. I already saw "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," "King Arthur" and "Alien: Covenant" and I have zero interest in "Snatched." But I write movie reviews in my spare time and I needed a new movie to review. This past weekend, in addition to giving us "Alien: Covenant," only had the options of "Everything, Everything" and the new "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movie. The other smaller movies that I would LIKE to see in between the big blockbusters didn't quite expand far enough and thus would require a 45 minute drive, which I wasn't in the mood for. So I strapped myself in for this summer's cheesy romance drama, embracing for the worst, but slightly curious as to how in the heck this one was going to resolve itself. I mean, it can't be any worse than that monstrosity that was "Me Before You" last summer... right?

"You underestimate my power!" would be this movie's response to that last question, because holy cow did this movie insult my intelligence. "Everything, Everything" stars Rue from " The Hunger Games" as a girl who is allergic to everything and thus has never been outside a day in her life. Because her mom tells her that she's going to die if she does. Pretty boring life, right? Well, she's in luck today because one of the brothers from "Jurassic World" has moved in next door (TWIST: "The Hunger Games" and "Jurassic World" are in the same universe!!!) and they both conveniently have bedrooms with giant windows facing each other that are close enough where if he writes a note on a piece of paper, she can read it just perfectly. This is helpful because Rue's mother certainly doesn't want this boy to have anything to do with her daughter as there are only two other people on earth that she well let into the house to talk to Rue and boy next door is not going to be added to this list. So boy gets her attention via their bedroom windows and writes his number on his window and the two begin a lovely texting relationship where they fall madly in love with each other without having spoken one word in person. Let the facepalming and eye-rolling begin.

That's not why this movie insulted my intelligence, though. Cheesy, dumb romance I can accept for what it is and perhaps recommend to a sister-in-law or female friend if it is cute and adorable enough. The writers of this movie just expect everyone watching to be able to throw all logic and common sense out the window in favor of a message that's kinda muddled and confusing in the first place. At least this doesn't glamorize assisted suicide seconds after showing that life is worth living, like "Me Before You" did last year. But man, I was stunned at some of the decisions this writing team made and it really made me feel awful for our two leads in this movie that really deserved better. Rue from "The Hunger Games" is Amandla Stendberg. She was great in "The Hunger Games" and now that she's 18 years old and has moved on from childhood into womanhood in front of our eyes, she really deserved a lot better than what she got. Same goes for Nick Robinson, who was the brother in "Jurassic World." These are two up-and-coming actors who do great in this role that they are given and have great on-screen chemistry as a young couple. The movie is also shot well with a great score, but the writing here is SO bad. I almost don't even know where to begin.

So how about we begin with this disease that this girl supposedly has. What they are trying portray is called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease, otherwise know as SCID. I didn't know anything about this going in, but I didn't buy for one second that this disease was being accurately portrayed on screen or that this mother would go all Rapunzel on her daughter and lock her up in a metaphorical tower for her whole life, not allowing her to even step outside or talk to more than two other human beings for her whole life. And if she was going to go this route, why in the heck does she have access to her own cell phone and laptop? Either this mother is full-out psychopath or she isn't. Pick a side movie! Don't do both! And if this girl is this sick with this awful disease, why does she not look sick at all? And if she hasn't stepped outside in her entire life, why is she not more socially awkward or oblivious to the outside world? She should be like the kid in "Room" as opposed to looking like a teenage girl who's only been grounded for a week. And why the inconsistency as to what does and doesn't make her sick? There's a lot of these small details scattered throughout the movie that didn't seem thought out at all, thus making this whole scenario feel super bogus.

Even if I were to suspend disbelief for a moment by ignoring any sense of logic and reason, focusing only on what rules this movie sets up for itself, I still find it frustrating that the movie doesn't follow those rules. So I had a hard time suspending disbelief for the sake of a fictional love story. But if I were to do my best to ignore and all sense of logic and reason and focus only on the bare bones of what this movie is all about, what we have here is a story that asks the question that if you could could have one perfect day with the man that you love, even if it meant possibly dropping dead the very next day, would you do it? Would it be worth it to sacrifice your life to have this perfect day? My answer is no. I'd rather be smart with my life. If I was allergic to sunlight, I'm not going to go out in the sun. If I was allergic to water, I'm not going to go swimming. If I'm deathly allergic to ice cream, I'm not going to go buy an ice cream cone.. I understand the sentiment of wanting to be able to do something that you have never been able to do, but I prefer to live within my physical limitations. Learn to enjoy life anyways. I'm not going to sacrifice my life to do something that could kill me, just to enjoy myself for one brief moment in time. That's flat out stupid.

I get the idea of living your dreams. That's fantastic. Live your dreams. But take some freaking wisdom along with you! But fine. Ignore logic and reason if you want. Throw common sense out the window. Enter yourself into a fantasy land where the rules of the universe don't apply. I could, in theory, forgive this movie and write it off as a dumb, cheesy romance movie meant for 12-year-old girls where sharp writing wasn't necessarily highest on the list of priorities for filmmakers to get right. I might give it a 6/10 and say whatever if my previously mentioned concerned were ALL that were the issue here. What I CAN'T forgive is the twist ending that this movie. Up to a certain point it was just cheesy and dumb. But there's two moments where everything completely derailed and blew this dumb movie to smithereens. The first was a major facepalm moment. But the second had me in a state of complete and utter shock. And I was so frustrated with this moment that I need to spoil it. If you are actually interested in this movie and you don't want this movie spoiled, then just know that I think this is a dumb, cheesy movie that derails in the final act and completely ruins what it didn't have going for it anyways. If you don't care or you've already seen it, then let's proceed.

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Moment No. 1. I knew that this girl was going to escape to the beach with this guy. Even if the trailers hadn't spoiled that plot line, the whole movie foreshadowed the heck out of it, so that was no surprise. What I DIDN'T expect was what beach they went to. Despite them living in Southern California, three hours from a beach, she somehow learns that it's super easy to get a credit card and decides to purchase plane tickets to Hawaii. Like, what? To me this sequence exemplified everything that was wrong with this movie up to this point. There's no common sense in this movie at all. The writing is horrific. Her mom works in a hospital. She has super long shifts. Pick a day where she is gone, sneak out and drive three hours to the beach, have your fun, and be back before she knows you're gone. But no. They flew to Hawaii. HAWAII. I lost it at this point. That's why I say this movie insulted my intelligence because there's just so many dumb moments and the movie just kept expecting me to throw all logic out the window and just accept what was going on. This was just too much. When the movie feels like the script was written by a group of 12-year-old girls with no prior writing experience, it's just way too much for me to handle.

Moment No. 2. And this is the deal-breaker. The straw the broke the camel's back. The moment where everything fell to pieces. You ready for this? The big twist in this movie is that SHE WAS NEVER SICK IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! Her Mom lost her husband and son in a car crash and was left only with her daughter. So in order to make it so that she never left, she faked the whole thing. From the moment that the daughter was a year old, this mother locked her up in this house and never let her see the light of day for 17 years. I don't even know what else to say to this. I was shocked. Dumbfounded. This just might be one of the stupidest endings I have ever witnessed in a movie. I feel that this should've ended like a "Criminal Minds" episode with the FBI busting in and arresting this woman. It would take a crazy psychopath to pull off a stint like this and if this is the case, then she would've gone totally overboard with this and made it impossible for her daughter to figure things out. But no. It is completely out of left field and makes it so absolutely freaking nothing in this whole movie makes any sense. They took the whole movie, which wasn't great in the first place, and threw it in a blender. But of course this means they got their happily ever after.

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So yeah, that's our movie. I'm not going to say this is quite as awful as last summer's "Me Before You," But man. I was not expecting this to go as far south as it did. I was expecting a cheesy, dumb romance movie that I was hoping that I could recommend to those people who enjoy that type of movie just like I often enjoy a dumb action movie. But I ended up feeling so bad for everyone in this movie because we had a great cast with two extremely talented young leads that deserved better. This was even a well-made movie when it comes to all the technical aspects of the film. They had everything in place for this to be a cute movie for girls to flock to in the summer. But the writing in the movie was so freaking bad that I just couldn't take it. To throw logic and common sense out the window at every little turn was extremely frustrating and then to end it the way they did had me stunned. I am surprised that movies this stupid still get made in the year 2017 and I have no idea how anyone can walk out of this movie having been entertained by what happened. I just don't get it. But the movie "Me Before You" somehow got an "A" CinemaScore and this got an "A-" CinemaScore, so maybe I'm just off my rocker. I'm giving "Everything, Everything" a dismal 4/10.